Bedford Guide and Talk About Writing

Bedford Guide:

I was surprised that Ryan and Zimmerelli didn't address what seems to be a common attuned of our students in the writing center (especially among the Rhetoric students), which is the "Yeah, but is it good?" mentality. This seems to fall under the "writing anxiety" category but is more specific because it deals specifically with the need to accomplish a specific outcome/grade for the assignment or course. This one seems to be especially hard to address because I'm 1) not in a position to evaluate/not evaluating them and 2) students seem less concerned with process than with outcome. I'm not saying they're insincere, just that they don't seem to focus on the writing process as something that can help them achieve their goals. I was thinking about this while reading the "writing anxiety" section as well as the sections that cover hearing, visual, and learning disabilities. I was also surprised that they didn't cover other cognitive disabilities that dictate how students write and interact with tutors and therefore how the tutor helps the writer. I've also seen this type of responses with personal statements and scholarship applications.

Talk About Writing:

 After last week's class and while finishing the reading for Mackiewicz and Thompson, I wondered what they would argue are things not to do in a tutoring session. There seems to be a lot of ways of going about a productive meeting, and more or less effective ways to employ tutoring strategies, but is anything ever incorrect? Is anything distinctly detrimental to tutoring writing? (Of course, I'm not speaking interpersonally.) Sometimes I feel like a tutoring session has gone wrong. Like, I couldn't convey what I was trying to convey and/or the student wasn't expressing their concerns, and the session ends feeling like we made no headway. I'd like to know how Mackiewicz and Thompson would identify tutoring sessions that are less than ideal, and how they would pinpoint tutor and/or student errors.

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